Who Cares About the EU? French MPs and the Europeanisation of Parliamentary Questions

Abstract

This study is based on the idea that the effective involvement of national parliamentarians in European Union (EU) affairs is as important for the capacity of national parliaments to adapt to the consequences of European integration as the elaboration of new institutional mechanisms. It therefore investigates the attention given to Europe in parliamentary questions as an indicator of the Europeanisation of the French National Assembly. Have French MPs developed a greater degree of attention to Europe in their ordinary work? What are the factors behind individual variations in MPs' attention to Europe? The empirical analysis of more than 334,000 questions from 1988 to 2007 shows the limited Europeanisation of French MPs' work, revealing that the type of questions (oral, written, to the government) is the most significant factor explaining the level of attention given to Europe.

Keywords:

• Europeanisation
• France
• National Assembly
• oversight
• parliamentary questions

Note on Authors

Julien Navarro* is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the Université Catholique de Lille, affiliated with the European School of Political and Social Sciences, Lille, France, email: [email protected]; Sylvain Brouard is FNSP Associate Research Professor at the Centre Emile Durkheim, Sciences Po, University of Bordeaux, where he is currently co-director of the French Agendas Project; email: [email protected]

Notes

1. The English version of the constitution, supplied by the National Assembly, can be viewed at: http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/english/index.asp#V

2. The questions were classified depending on their European content as informed by the keywords attributed by the National Assembly services. We define this European dimension as anything in relation to the European Communities and later the European Union. Parliamentary questions dealing with EU policies, the transposition of directives, treaty reforms, European symbols, French European policies, the Euro, and so on, are therefore classified as Europeanised.

3. Moreover, the number of paid assistants on whose services deputies can call to help with the preparatory work increased from two to three (Hayward, 2004).

4. Such was the attitude of the Gaullist RPR MPs during the 10th legislature towards Alain Juppé (RPR, in charge of Foreign Affairs) and Alain Lamassoure (UDF, European Affairs) between 1993 and 1995, as well as towards Hervé de Charette (UDF, European Affairs) and Michel Barnier (RPR, European Affairs), because Juppé and Barnier represented the most pro-European wing of RPR. During the Jospin government, the MDC parliamentarians were the most active in supervising the action of Hubert Védrine (Socialist, Foreign Affairs) and Pierre Moscovici (Socialist, in charge of European Affairs), the latter identified as pro-European. The configuration of the 12th legislature was symmetrical to that of the 10th, with the UDF parliamentarians submitting a large number of Europeanised questions to UMP ministers of Foreign Affairs (successively Dominique de Villepin, Michel Barnier and Philippe Douste-Blazy); the fact that the first two secretary of states for European Affairs (Noelle Lenoir and Claudie Haigneré) had no official party affiliation and the third one was from the UMP (Catherine Colonna) probably strengthened the will of the UDF pro-European parliamentarians to scrutinise their actions.